MIT Students, in the Grand Tradition, Cheat to Win

Column by Matthew H. Hersch

Opinion Editor

In the game of politics, fortunes can shift like donkey hair on a windy
day. In a presidential campaign that I thought was beyond hope, I have
gained new momentum -- a sign that my bid for the Democratic nomination may
be within reach. Just as Jerry Brown, capitalizing on the flake vote, has
jumped ahead in the polls, I have found grand new constituencies -- all
mesmerized by the substance of my spew. In Illinois, the dead came out by
the thousands to show their support, as did hundreds of unregistered
voters, children under four, and the criminally insane.

But my political efforts must now take a backseat to a more pressing campus
issue -- cheating. Covert nastiness may have its place in the world of
espionage, but massive academic dishonesty has no place at MIT or any other
institution of learning.

Cheating, on exams, and more often on problem sets, has become as enshrined
a tradition at MIT as hacking and bad teaching.

Students will be quick to say that professors are always vague when it
comes to the amount of collaboration allowed on graded work. To a small
extent they are right. Some cheating is accidental, as when students think
they are doing legitimate group work when in fact they are violating a
professor's rules on collaboration. This cheating, though, constitutes a
very small part of the whole. Most cheaters are fully aware that what they
are doing is immoral and forbidden. They just really don't care.

I have yet to be in a class at MIT in which students did not cheat with the
willing approval of their classmates. In most, doing problem sets becomes
some kind of bizarre Marxist ritual, with correct sets becoming the
property of the masses. A couple of smart, generous, and nerdy communists
always donate their problem sets to the communal pool of knowledge, and in
the hours before sets are due, you can always find students crammed into
MIT reading rooms passing around the answers and copying ferociously.

The cheaters I have spoken with (who number in the thousands) are fully
aware of what they are doing. They cheat because they won't be caught,
because they have a genetic disposition to do so, but mainly because they
see no other way to finish their work and still have time to eat, sleep,
and go to the bathroom occasionally. Problem sets are hard -- damn hard --
and most students would rather get a dishonest A than an honest C.

And cheating doesn't materialize from the void. MIT teaches students that
in the end, only their position on the class curve matters. Actual learning
is secondary -- the student with the highest score wins. MIT teaches
students to be resourceful, and while I applaud this concept, many students
view this philosophy as an open invitation to do anything necessary to
win.

All of this cheating might be tolerable if everyone did it. Unfortunately,
or fortunately, rather, many people don't. In courses that emphasize
problem sets, Cheating Quotients, or CQs, artificially inflate the curve,
hurting honest students who are willing to bear responsibility for their
inadequacies. But sadly, to students who just don't take tests well,
problem sets are an invaluable way for them to show their abilities on a
level playing field with the rest of their peers. Artificially skewed
problem set grades, though, destroy these students' last chance of doing
well at MIT. Cheaters care little about issues of abstract morality,
though, and they are also quite willing to grind fellow students into the
dirt to succeed.

In all fairness, though, few MIT students are consciously malicious -- they
are just narrow-minded, and, in the grand nerd tradition, they lack an
awareness of the ethical ramifications of their actions.

Faculty and administration responses to the cheating problem have been
inept at worst and naive at best. Professors establish tutorial hours for
their classes, but these more often become just another excuse for
instructors to teach badly; I have heard professors utter the dreaded words
"This will be explained to you better in tutorial" countless times.
Besides, as long as cheating is easier than getting extra help,
time-conscious MIT students will cheat.

The administration's answer to the cheating crisis is an Institute honor
code. This effort is primarily a public relations gambit to deflect media
criticism that MIT is the nesting ground of cheating geeks, which it is.
But honor codes won't scare students -- they don't care about morality in
the first place, and already know that they can be expelled if they are
caught. Besides, if you ask a liar whether he's telling the truth, he'll
probably lie, and to a veteran cheater, agreeing to an honor code is just
another chance to cheat.

Another brilliant plan to stem cheating is the establishment of some kind
of confidential mechanism by which students can turn their neighbors in.
Hopefully, no one would do so -- if they did, this hotline would raise all
sorts of legal questions concerning the rights of the accused to face their
accusers. A cheating hotline, at its worst, would become a great way to get
your enemies into trouble -- at best, it would become a college version of
America's Most Wanted. It might stop a few big-time cheaters, but
would do nothing to deter future dishonesty. And if students were legally
obligated to turn in cheaters as part of an honor code, MIT would
deteriorate even further into a paranoid culture.

In the end, students will cheat as long as it is in their interest to do
so. Only when students feel that cheating is unnecessary, or that risks
outweigh benefits, will they stop copying problem sets. In the meantime,
professors could teach better and make their problem sets easier, and treat
homework for exactly what it is -- a weekly take-home test. Instructors
wouldn't allow group collaboration on in-class exams, and they shouldn't
allow it on problem sets. This change wouldn't end cheating, but it would
help to more clearly define unacceptable behavior. Graders, in turn, should
pay more attention to evidence of fraud.

None of this will probably happen, though. Problem sets will get harder as
part of a misguided effort to offset the effects of cheating, and as they
get harder cheating will become even more prevalent. As instructors phase
out problem sets all together, honest students will continue to get
squeezed. In the end, they will either adopt dishonest tactics, continue
getting Cs, or leave MIT all together.